Social workers often have to deal with a high number of cases, which can lead to stress-related sickness. Photograph: Alamy

The social care sector has a reputation for high levels of staff sickness and turnover. The work is tough, both physically and emotionally draining, but critics say management is typically not good at responding to problems of employee absence and poor retention rates.

Social workers, in particular, complain of being overloaded and of suffering stress. But one organisation, Britain's biggest employer of social workers, appears to have addressed and reversed this trend with a package of swift response measures aimed at supporting staff at work.

This organisation, perhaps surprisingly given its historic difficulties, is Cafcass, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, which works with children and families in the courts. Managers say they have dramatically reduced the numbers of days lost to sickness in just three years – from an average of 16 a year to fewer than seven – by using counselling, stress-buster sessions and expert help from occupational health.

The achievement is all the more remarkable as it has come amid a huge rise in demand for Cafcass's services. Following the death five years ago of Peter Connelly, who died as a result of abuse in Haringey, north London, applications to take children into care reached record highs this summer and are running almost 8% up on last year. Average individual caseloads for Cafcass social workers are up to 25.5, compared with 18.8 in 2009-10.

Intervention

The steep reduction in sickness absence at Cafcass is attributed by management in part to an initiative aimed at making the health and wellbeing of social workers a priority in the workplace.

Intervention is key to the approach and it starts from day one of an employee's absence, with counselling offered immediately in cases of stress-related illness. Managers hope to reduce sickness rates still further and, from next March, frontline workers will have ready access to physiotherapy, eye tests, flu jabs and annual health checks.

Cafcass employee Therese O'Meara, a family court adviser, has benefited from the focus on supporting people back to work. Four years ago, she suffered a serious back injury after being knocked off her bike on her way to work at her London office.

Once a keen runner and kickboxer, the 47-year-old took 15 months off work after an operation to stabilise her spine following the accident. Simple tasks such as putting on socks and shoes were for a long time impossible. But since her return to work part-time, two years ago, she has not had a day off sick. She says this is down to flexibility from her managers, together with help from occupation health therapists.

"Special adjustments have been made to a desk and chair to make it easier to sit and arrangements made so I can work from a different office," O'Meara says. "My manager has been very supportive, caring and kind. Cafcass is flexible with the days I work – and that has made a huge difference. If all these things hadn't been put in place, I wouldn't have been able to work."

This new emphasis on employee wellbeing may be seen as symptomatic of a wider turnaround in the fortunes of Cafcass, which has in the past teetered from crisis to crisis. Two years ago, a report from the National Audit Office described it as an organisation characterised by poor management, high staff sickness rates and turnover, and low morale. A separate report by the National Association of Probation Officers (Napo) claimed managers were preoccupied by targets – and accused them of bullying staff.

Those claims were rejected by Cafcass at the time. But Jabbar Sardar, the organisation's head of human resources, now admits that the number of days lost to sickness has gone down in part because of the recruitment of better-quality managers.

Other measures have also contributed, Sardar says. Staff have been issued with the "right tools" to do the job: desktop computers have been replaced with laptops and frontline staff have been issued with smartphones. More than 100 staff have attended a resilience training course – a one-day programme aimed at managing stress, one of the biggest causes of absence – and a further 300 are booked to attend.

"Our sickness record now is about six days a year," says Sardar, who thinks it is among the best in the social care sector. "In the last 12 months, 54% of staff did not take a day off sick and 77% took fewer than five days."

The cost of sickness absence to Cafcass has gone down from £3.3m a year to £2.5m. This is likely to drop further when physiotherapy sessions are made available to staff. Research shows that about 50% of employee absences are related to musculoskeletal problems.

Career development

"We believe the money we spend can be spent in a smarter way," says Sardar. "Our new health and wellbeing plan will cost no more than our current provision plus costs around occupational health, counselling and eye tests. Our approach is to ensure that we use the current money we have more innovatively to impact on 1,900 staff, as the current provision is focused on staff that are either off sick or require support. Our new approach is about offering every member of staff a customised health and wellbeing package."

Attention is being paid also to career development, Sardar adds. From next month, all social workers will be encouraged to expand their skills under a new talent management programme.

Turnover of Cafcass staff remains relatively high at 7.8% a year, although this figure is said to be inflated by redundancies and retirements as the organisation reduces costs (a £3m pruning of its £130m budget this year). And unions have yet to be convinced of the dawning of a new era, claiming that the fall in sickness rates is attributable to a crackdown by managers.

"Management have become extremely heavy-handed as far as absences are concerned at a time when staff are under considerable stress," says Harry Fletcher, Napo assistant general secretary. "Staff are struggling with extraordinarily high workloads. Yet new procedures have been introduced which are very punitive, and very draconian. Occupational health is brought in at an early stage and after six weeks' absence staff are finding themselves subject to health capability proceedings to assess their fitness to work."

Both sides agree that staff are carrying a huge burden of responsibility. Anthony Douglas, Cafcass chief executive, says that workers are under "immense" pressure and it is essential that they have the right support.

"Cafcass practitioners have to make incredibly high-pressure decisions every day, about some of the most vulnerable children and families in England," Douglas says. "Our staff are passionate about what they do – it's a vocation as well as a job."

• This article was amended on 24 October 2012 to correct the name of Therese O'Meara, which was wrongly spelled as Theresa O'Mara.

Sign up for the Guardian Today

Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning.